Rainbow
by SafireGriffon
Summary: Just a little prompt to get me back into writing...each chapter is a snippet involving one DA2 character and a color of the rainbow. M rating just to be safe for "Blue" chapter.
1. Red

Red

(Carver and/or Bethany)

Mother is on the ground, and there's a moment when the fear simply snaps too taut for quivering doubt to loop itself in the slack. And so the fear propels forward, not back, toward the monster—paints it as red as a whore's mouth for one hot moment—then something squeezes tight and the world swims in red, red, red.

And then it's gone.


	2. Orange

Orange

(Aveline)

She normally pushes herself far away from such womanish thoughts—they are useless distractions for one, and a great way to lose the respect of your men for another. But when she sees a little ginger-haired child attempting, tip-toe, to climb atop one of the crates in front of the merchant stall his mother is shopping at, she can't help the little tug in her chest. _It might have been._


	3. Yellow

Yellow

(Varric)

She had golden hair and clever brown eyes; eyes that told you she'd steal the boots right off your feet if you weren't paying enough attention. She was the first real friend Varric could remember having, all the way from the day they met, both trying to use the same hiding space (a crawlspace under someone's house in Lowtown). He'd broken some plate the Bartrand had brought with him from Orzammar, and was trying to avoid the inevitable explosion; he never found out what she'd run from, though from how dirty and thin she was then, he'd wager she'd been running for a while. But despite their strange meeting, she was a surprisingly loyal companion; she didn't mind that Varric was busy between keeping his mother's outbursts out of sight and watching Bartrand's back when he was too stiff-necked to watch his own, didn't call it "groveling" or "forgetting his dwarven pride" when he had to make nice with someone his brother had pissed off, and listened to all his stories with rapt attention, so long as he used a properly dramatic voice to tell the tale. She'd been shy at first, only coming around when she could see that Varric had food to share, and always keeping away from Varric's home itself, preferring to meet him elsewhere. As time went on, however, familiarity bred comfort and trust, and she no longer hesitated to meet him near the door, and one day even accepted an invitation to come inside. As they both grew up and grew older, she took the invitation to warm his bed, as well.

A bed she was taking up far too much room on at the moment. Varric blinked himself awake, and found he had a face full of that golden yellow hair. "Bianca, move." A sleepy grumble, but no attempt to comply. He sighed and shrugged; it was daylight, so he might as well get up. He spoke to her as he got dressed. "All right girl, you go ahead and sleep in." Huh. Only one boot by the bed. He must have kicked the other one somewhere. "I guess I'll be the one who gets up and goes to work again. I keep thinking one of these days it has to be your turn; it's not fair that it's always mine." He looked over and found one of those clever brown eyes looking up at him from under the yellow hair...and his boot folded underneath Bianca's two front paws.

"Ruff," was all she answered.

Rough, indeed.


	4. Green

Green

(Anders/Hawke)

When they first met, Anders remembers being struck by Hawke's green eyes. It seemed as though he'd never seen eyes so bright and clear, like sea water in a thick glass bottle. It wasn't until later, when they'd had many opportunities to look into each other's eyes, that he'd noticed all the other colors hidden in them, the flecks of blue and gold and gray. That's what made this so hard to do now, when he knew he ought to tell his lover the truth. Hawke was worried for him, but angry too; angry that he wouldn't be honest, angry that he hadn't been honest for weeks now, working all night on things he couldn't tell Hawke about, stumbling into bed in the wee hours only to drag himself back out in the early morning to go to the clinic. And now he was asking yet another favor, without explaining why. The clear green eyes had turned a muddy brown, the sparkle in them nearly drowned in it, and it was his fault. If there were anything he could do to bring that clear green back—_No, _spake Justice, _This is what must be done. Do not allow yourself to grow distracted by the temporary effects on one person when what you are doing will ensure justice for thousands._ And so he does the only thing he can do; he looks away so he cannot see how his love has polluted those clear green waters.


	5. Blue

Blue

(Fenris/Isabella)

Strange as it may seem, he's not generally aware of the glow when it's at its most intense; he doesn't really _see_ much at all then, just sort of _knows_ where life is, the delicate places where the pulsating, circuitous life can be snapped and broken. But when he is more in control, he hates being able to see the halo of blue around his vision, hates the reminder of having no control over what happened to him.

But she seems fascinated by them, tracing the lines the the pads of her fingers, with her suckling lips, her wicked tongue.

"Will you stop that?" He finally grouses, when he's tired of her games; it feels pleasurable, certainly, but it also feels wrong, that he should take pleasure in the body that was disfigured so against his will, and she's not helping matters.

"What, these?" Isabella traces her fingernails lightly on this inside of his forearm. "But they're beautiful."

He scoffs. "I'm sure Danarius would be pleased to hear that you liked the design."

For a moment she sits bolt upright, straddling him, her eyes blinking in surprise. But just for a moment; this is Isabella, mind. She lowers herself back over him, kisses his furrowed brow. "You silly man, of course it's not that. This isn't art; they're scars. But scars tell everyone something very important." She wraps her arms around him. "You're no victim; you're a survivor. And that's the only sort of man I'll spend my precious time with." She kisses him full, now, and they don't waste any more time on doubts.


	6. Indigo

Indigo

(Isabella)

Backstabber and Bodice-Ripper. They're perfect for her, and so that's why her first real act of rebellion from her husband is to have their images printed on her skin; Backstabber right between her shoulder blades and Bodice-Ripper curving to the side of her breastbone. They're perfect for her and they're perfect for him, too; isn't he the one, after all, who ripped open the bodice of a girl scarce old enough to be wearing them? He told her that tattoos on a woman were hideous; that only cows had brands. And if she'd made a quip about what that said about his relationship with barn animals, well, who could blame her?


	7. Violet

Violet

(Merrill)

Everything in this city is gray. The sky, the stone, the drawn faces of the elves in the Alienage. So when she sees the bright pile of remnants at the dressmaker's stall her eyes pop, greedily gobblin gup all the colors she can see.

"You can't be here now—they see an elf looking at the wares, the human ladies won't buy them." Hisses the elf attending the stall. At Merrill's stuttered apology, her eyes soften. "Come back when we're getting read to close shop—I can probably convince the owner to sell you the scraps for cheap."

And cheap to a woman running a business is different than cheap to a (mostly) unemployed Dalish girl, but even so she manages to get a piece large enough for the small window in her hovel.

The violet shadows they cast on the gray corners make the coin worthwhile.


End file.
